Chichester Cinema at New Park
Pennies from Heaven / The Singing Detective
CHICHESTER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Kenith Trodd, Producer:
A Selective Retrospective of his work with major screen talent 1969-2004 including Dennis Potter, Simon Gray, Stephen Poliakoff, Pat O’Connor and Christopher Morahan.
5th Event – DOUBLE BILL
Pennies From Heaven - Episode One
“Why can’t life be more like the songs?” asks Arthur our hero. Pennies From Heaven, modestly sub-titled “a play with music in six parts” is actually one of the most ambitious and revolutionary undertaking in the history of TV drama. Arthur, hopeless at almost everything, has a redeeming feckless lovability even as he ruins his marriage, abandons his mistress and is tried for murder. But despite this darkness, the drift and impact are sunny, optimistic & life-enhancing because the songs deepen the characters self-understanding and signal a yearning for the world to be a better place.
Pennies From Heaven made stars of Bob Hoskins and Cheryl Campbell and was much awarded including a BAFTA and much admiration in the US.
…and…
The Singing Detective - Episode One
The Singing Detective was immediately acclaimed as Dennis Potter’s masterpiece and went on to win many UK and International awards including a Peabody. Though financed for television it has many cinematic qualities and has played with great success at big screen events.
The story begins and virtually ends with a middle-aged man morose and wracked with pain trapped in a National Health bed. “I bet you lie there all day just thinking of murdering people” says one of his fellow patients. More or less true. Marlow is reconstructing, reinventing and fantasising the entire fabric of his life, helped once more by “the songs”.
But the music has a more caustic enabling role than in Pennies and is in support of a multi-layered and endlessly entertaining narrative which allows Jon Amiel and Michael Gambon as Marlow to deliver almost more than Potter’s best.
Episode 1 has the big musical highlight Dem Bones where the hallucinatory Marlow turns a routine ward occasion into a balletic, operatic and satiric critique of a bunch of condescending medics.
(Tickets £5)
Large Screen DVD presentation in the Studio (limited seating capacity)
UK · 78 & 86 · Piers Haggard & Jon Amiel · 70 & 70min
